


my thoughts will echo your name

by lightthornn



Category: The Last Hours Series - Cassandra Clare, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Angst, Declarations Of Love, F/M, Love Confessions, Love Conquers All, Pining, james is an idiot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 06:36:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29431815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightthornn/pseuds/lightthornn
Summary: james herondale is in love with his wife. a marriage built on lies, yet he finds himself lying, pretending that he doesn't love her.
Relationships: Cordelia Carstairs/James Herondale
Comments: 8
Kudos: 57





	my thoughts will echo your name

**Author's Note:**

> happy valentines day everyone! hope you enjoy!

“You don’t get to do that,” Cordelia said, her words cutting into him like a knife as he put his hand on her arm. He took it back so fast her skin might have burned him. 

“Sorry,” James said, quickening his pace and leaving her a few steps behind. 

The two of them had left a party, needing to talk about the killer that was ravaging the streets of London, already having killed one Shadowhunter. James had never known him, but his father had, and had been even more intent on finding who had killed him. 

Silence followed, suffocating and making James want to run far away as he started to go back to the party, where he could lose himself with his friends and pretend he wasn’t in love with his wife, who didn’t love him back. Their marriage had been political, to save Cordelia and himself. There had never been any love from her side. 

“There’s nobody around. No need to keep up the act,” Cordelia said after a long few moments. 

He closed his eyes lightly, wishing there was no act at all. He didn’t turn to look at her, because he knew that it was a bad idea. When he was looking at her, he became a fool. 

“I know,” he said. 

“You love Grace, I know that. You don’t have to pretend unless we’re around others.” 

His gaze dropped down to the silver bracelet he wore around his wrist, the love that usually bloomed in him whenever he saw it. Now, it was a dull and uncomfortable buzz in the back of his mind. 

“I know,” he said again, the words burning his lips. 

Cordelia sighed. They were both outside the party now, and the sound of music and talking travelled through the wall. Yet, they were still alone. 

“I’m going to find my brother,” Cordelia said, taking away any chance of him saying one last thing. “I will come and find you at the end of the night.” 

The end of the night, when the two of them would go to their shared townhome and sleep in separate rooms, while James wondered if things ever could’ve been different, if it could ever be real. They would wake up in the morning, and they would eat breakfast together and most days, they would leave together. 

Cordelia walked back into the room in front of him, quickie vanishing in the crowds of people. 

James looked around for his friends. It wasn’t too hard to find them, considering that Thomas was the tallest person in the room. Matthew was laughing at something that had just been said when he walked up to them, taking the glass of wine from Matthew’s hand and taking a long drink from it. 

Matthew looked at him curiously. “Are you alright, Jamie?” 

“I’m fine,” James said, resisting the urge to already look for Cordelia, even though he had just seen her a few moments before. 

Thomas raised an eyebrow. “How were things with Cordelia?” 

“The usual,” James said. 

In a way, it was nice to have his friends know that the marriage was a lie, one built as a wall of protection. But if he had to lie, wouldn’t it be easier in the end, to lie to everyone? 

“Only a few months left,” Christopher said. “Right?” 

James nodded, leaning against the wall next to Matthew. He wondered for a moment if it was possible to stop time, to never let the next few months pass, to keep them ahead of him forever. 

“You’re looking forward to it, right?” Matthew asked, taking his drink back from James. “She seems to be excited.” 

“Yes,” James said. “It’ll be nice to not lie all the time.” 

“Well then, excellent,” Matthew said with a smile. “Lying does tend to hurt the soul.” 

“Indeed,” James agreed, looking across the room and seeing his sister talking animatedly to their parents, waving her hands and smiling while Will and Tessa smiled fondly at their daughter. 

He wondered how disappointed they would be in him if they ever found out the truth. 

Across the room, Cordelia was dancing with her brother, a smile on her face. He couldn’t help but wonder how much happier she would be once these few months were over. The last thing he wanted was for her to be trapped in something she hated. 

While James wanted time to slow down, she surely wanted it to speed up. And if he could find a way, he would speed up time, make it so months passed like seconds. For her. 

He would do anything for her, if only to see one of her smiles that lit up the world. 

Christopher was looking at him curiously, as if trying to figure him out. It was the way Christopher looked at most things, but never at him. James wasn’t sure how he felt about it, as he looked away from Cordelia. Thomas was looking in the same direction, but James was sure he was looking at Eugenia, who was close to the Carstairs siblings.

“I’m going to head up to my room,” he no longer lived at the Institute, but he knew that his room would always be his room, even when he hadn’t lived there in years. 

While Matthew seemed worried, he let James go with a promise not to stay away for long, and to come back to the party later. 

It was always odd, leaving a party and walking into silence, ears ringing from the absence of noise. While odd, he had always liked it, never having enjoyed parties as much as he should. 

Back in his room, he shut the door behind him, hoping that nobody would need him for the foreseeable future. 

He remembered his father telling him how much love was supposed to hurt, and he knew now that he had been right. Of course he had been right. 

James stared at the wallpaper, the deep blue that had been the same since he was a child. He had grown up between these walls, learning to walk and talk to coming home feeling numb, not knowing what was wrong with him but knowing that Grace wasn’t what he wanted. She was a comforting winter, the quiet of cold mornings after a snow storm, wind biting his skin and a storm in the distance. And he didn’t hate it. 

But was he destined for a life of winter? Ice and storms and cold? 

Surely, that couldn’t be the life that he wanted to live. 

He didn’t know what he wanted, if he was being honest. 

What he wanted was the type of love his sister would write about in her stories, and how she would blush when she read it to him and their parents while James would wonder when his sister learned what love felt like. 

Part of him wanted to say that he had that with Grace, but he didn’t know if he did anymore. 

Downstairs, his friends would be laughing as they danced around each other, and he was sure some of them would be looking at a certain someone, wondering what would come out of it. While James stared down at his hand and there was the Wedded Union rune, and yet, it meant nothing, and it never would mean anything. Not to Cordelia, not to his friends who thought there wasn’t any love. 

He thought that one sided love might as well be none at all. 

In a few months, he would be divorced, and he would know that he would never find another love like the one he had found in Cordelia Carstairs. 

He kept trying to tell himself it was for the best. After all, when he had proposed to her, he had no idea that he loved her. Grace was vibrant and loud in his mind and his heart, then. She wasn’t anymore. 

“James?” someone knocked on his door, and he knew that soft voice like the back of his hand, knew it better than he knew most things. Just the sound of it made his heart skip a beat at times. 

“Come in,” James told her, sitting down on his bed and scrambling for a book, hoping it would look like he had just left the party to lose himself in a book. It wouldn’t be unbelievable at all. 

Cordelia walked into the room, and he couldn’t help that the first thing he thought when he saw her was that she looked beautiful. Her cheeks were flushed, and it looked like she had run up. Her dark red dress clung to her body in all the right places and he had to tear his eyes away. 

“Matthew told me that you were up here,” she said. “And… earlier.” 

“Earlier,” he echoed. 

“You don’t have to pretend to love me, James,” Cordelia said. The sound of his name on her lips was always his favorite thing, even now, when there was sadness laced into it. “In fact, it would be better if we let down on the act a bit.” 

“What?” James asked, eyebrows almost shooting off his face. 

“The divorce has to be believable,” 

“I know, but-” she put her hand up, cutting him off. 

“You don’t want to be married to me, nor I to you.”

She might as well have taken a knife and stabbed it into his heart, as a stab of pain went through him and he couldn’t do anything but stare at her. He knew the words were true, but hearing them said was something else entirely. Making it too real when he could pretend most of the time. Pretend that they were happy. 

“We still have months left,” James said. 

“The foundation has to start sooner or later. Your parents and mine won’t believe it if it comes out of nowhere.” 

He didn’t want to get divorced. He didn’t want to pretend like he didn’t love her and never would again. He didn’t want to give up the small moments they had, even if they had been built on a lie. 

“We can do that,” James said, wishing the words didn’t sound like they were coming from someone else. 

Cordelia gave him a small smile, one that looked like it pained her.

“Are you alright?” he asked. 

“I’m fine,” she said with a nod. “You don’t need to worry about me.” 

“I’m still going to worry about you, Daisy. You’re still my friend.” 

Did friends lie about loving each other? He guessed that most didn’t have to. 

“There’s nothing to worry about. You can get back to your book.” 

James looked down at the book in his lap. He had forgotten that he was even holding it. 

“Just because… this is a lie, doesn’t mean that being friends is one.” James insisted. 

“Really?” Cordelia asked. “What about after we are divorced? Everyone is going to expect us to hate each other. We might as well start pretending we hate each other. We’re going to need to.” 

“I’m never going to hate you,” James said, appalled that she even wanted to consider the both of them hating each other. 

“It’s a good thing you’re good at acting, then. Isn’t it?” Cordelia snapped. “I thought my brother would figure it out. Earlier, he told me that he was glad I had found someone who looked at me the way you do. One day even Lucie asked if I was sure it was still a lie.” 

“You want me to act like I hate you,” he said blankly. 

“Yes.” 

She turned on her heel, and there were a thousand things that he wanted to say, but he couldn’t get any of them out until she was pushing the door open and he knew he had to stop her from leaving. 

“No.” 

Cordelia turned around, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. 

“I’m not going to act like I hate you.” 

“Why not?” Cordelia asked, the fire he knew so well leaking into her tone as she shut the door again behind her.

“Because I don’t care if it has to be believable. Pretending to hate will only make the hate real.” 

“They can’t catch onto our lie.” Cordelia said. “They’ll know you burnt down that house.” 

“Then let them. If they find out, they’ll find out. Let them. I’m not going to hate you, lie or truth.” 

“Do you not understand how foolish you sound?” Cordelia asked. “All you have to do is pretend for some time. A few months, perhaps, while we wait to calm down. Everyone else will expect it.” 

“Then give them the unexpected!” 

“As soon as this is all over, you’ll run back to Grace. So why do you care?” 

They were both shouting now, and he didn’t care about that. Didn’t care if anyone walked by and heard them arguing. 

“Why would I run back to her? She’s engaged to Charles!” James said. The pain that had once accompanied that thought was absent. 

“You always run back to her,” Cordelia said. “In the end, it’s always her.” 

“No it’s not,” James said, unable to stop the words before they flew out of his mouth, floating between the two of them like a demon, taking all of their attention and sending fear through their veins. Well, his veins at least. He didn’t know about Cordelia. 

“You’re being ridiculous,” Cordelia said, turning around on her heel. While she was turned away from him, she sighed. “Life would be easier if I did hate you.” 

“Tell me you hate me, then. Make life easier.” James challenged, hoping that she wouldn’t take him up on it. He didn’t know what he would do if she did. 

It was silent. She was going to walk out of the room, he was sure. She was going to walk away from him. “You can’t ask me to do that.” 

“Do you want to act like we hate each other in the hopes that a lie will become truth?” 

“No, James. I would never hope to hate you. But how are we supposed to get divorced and pretend everything is okay? Because it won’t be. You’ll have Grace’s arms to run into. But who will I run to?” 

“How many times do I have to tell you I won’t run to Grace?” James snapped. 

Cordelia turned around. “You love her!” she shouted. “You love her with your entire heart! It’s always going to be  _ her _ .” 

“But it’s  _ you _ !” James shouted right back. “Why would I run to her when I only ever want to run to you? Why her when I love  _ you _ ?” He was breathing heavily and didn’t even have the energy to worry about what he had just said. 

He was tired of acting like he didn’t love her. Tired of the lies and having to act like he was miserable. He was miserable because of the lying. Not because of her. Never because of her. 

Cordelia turned around again, her eyes unbelievably sad. “No. No, you don’t.” 

Pain tore through him as he looked at her, not sure if the tears in his eyes were an imagination. “I do.” 

“There is no need to lie even more than we are,” Cordelia said, shaking her head. She wouldn’t meet his gaze. 

“I’m not lying,” James told her, knowing that it was her choice to believe him. 

“You told me that you didn’t love me,” Cordelia said, holding up her hand to him, where she wore the Herondale ring around her finger, glimmering in the light and seeming to torture him. 

“Are you sure that I wasn’t lying then?” 

Her mouth fell open, and she glanced around the room, her eyes only darting over his face. “You weren’t lying.” 

“I didn’t think I was,” James said. “But I was.” 

“James,” Cordelia said, and for a second, his heart flew with hope. “Stop it.” 

His heart sank. 

“Daisy-” 

“Stop,” Cordelia repeated. “You… you-” 

“Please don’t leave,” James said, needing her to stay like he needed to breathe. 

“James,” she said. “Love is not a word to be tossed around, it gives foolish hope and-” 

“Hope?” James asked, a smile tugging at the very edge of his mouth. He tried to force it down. 

Cordelia’s eyes widened, like she hadn’t meant to say that. “Yes,” she said after a pause. “Yes. Hope.” 

“Hope that…?” James hoped that she hadn’t given him foolish hope right then, hoped that she wasn’t about to squeeze his heart into dust. 

“That you might love me only half as much as I love you,” she said quietly, now meeting his eyes, and he knew that he wanted to look into hers for the rest of his life. 

“Well…” he said, his voice shaking. “Then you must love me an awful lot because-” 

“Shut up,” she said suddenly, and he furrowed his brows in confusion, suddenly wondering if he had done something wrong. But all of that worry vanished the second she took a step closer to him, “and kiss me.” 

Well, he couldn’t say no, could he?

James broke the distance between them, putting an arm around her waist and pulling her up against him, kissing her like he never would again. 

She gave a small gasp under his touch, and wrapped her hands around his neck, her fingers in his hair as she arched herself against him, making him feel like he was on fire. 

Everywhere she touched him was another flame dancing across his skin, burning him inside and out. She was warmth and fire, bringing flame to his chilling world. 

_ This  _ was the life he was destined to live, surrounded by fire, but only if it was started by Cordelia. 

Anyone else’s would never be warm enough. 

His hands moved up from her waist, and he cupped her breasts as her lips parted beneath his and her lips were the only ones he ever wanted to learn as she shoved his jacket off his shoulders, tossing it across the room. 

The two of them started to stumble backwards until she was pushing him down onto his bed. He pulled back slightly and saw her above him, lips pink, hair and eyes wild, and never had she looked more beautiful. She gave him a small smile as she moved, her legs caging his hips. 

She leaned down, kissing him with a desperation that was almost foreign to him, setting his veins on fire and sending desire through his entire body. He wanted more. More of this flame, more of this passion, more of  _ Daisy _ . 

“You are going to ruin me, Cordelia Carstairs,” he whispered against her mouth as he pushed the straps of her dress off her shoulder, leaning up and pressing kisses up her neck and across her collarbone. 

“Herondale,” she whispered, her voice raspy, alighting nerves in James he hadn’t known existed. “Cordelia Herondale. And I will gladly ruin you.” 

“Cordelia Herondale,” he repeated. She started to unbutton his shirt. If anyone was going to ruin him, he only wanted it to be her. 


End file.
